


Heaven Before Your Eyes

by kunshi_sekijou



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Gen, Inspirational!fic, Optimism, for once, no one gets tortured
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-11
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-11 14:52:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3330116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kunshi_sekijou/pseuds/kunshi_sekijou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dedicted to all those attempting to or have attempted to live life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heaven Before Your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> **Older piece. Originally posted on ff.net.**  
>  \---
> 
> _"In dreams begin responsibility."_
> 
> –William Butler Yeats

**[BGM:** Monkey Majik - "HALO"]

**Heaven Before Your Eyes**

Akaya reached into his bag, rummaging absentmindedly. His hand shoved aside titanium tennis racquets and pushed back fuzzy tennis balls.

Eventually, he pulled out a book: thin, like material an elementary school student would read. His English reading assignment for the month.

His final year of high school just started, but he wasn't at all motivated. Even after school club activities seemed dull and lacking. The goal of winning he had set his eyes upon all this time faded from sight. Just like that. Unbelievable.

He hurled himself at his bed. Rolling over onto his back, he lifted the petite book up to take a better look at his assignment.

 _The Five People You Meet in Heaven_. A little clipart-sized Ferris wheel posed before a light yellow background on the cover. He couldn't associate the Ferris wheel with the book's contents. Maybe it's just his lack of imagination.

So he resorted to peeling back the cover to read the inside flap. From what he understood from the synopsis, the book is about a man who dies and goes to heaven, where he meets five people from his past who help him make sense of his life.

Okay, it didn't sound like a book packed with much action. Akaya rolled his eyes. His teachers had the tendency of assigning reading that he had trouble understanding half the times due to the authors' sick habit of burying important points beneath piles of sophistications and abstractions. That was why he detested reading so much. Thanks to his teachers.

Grumbling, he flipped open the book grudgingly.

He read.

_Eddie works around the pier... A roller coaster runs out of order... A little girl is in danger... Eddie tries to save the little girl... Eddie dies and ends up in heaven..._

Heaven.

A collection of cotton clouds encompassed him.

Heaven.

Wait. What?

Eddie died. Eddie went to heaven. He's still alive. Why is he here?

He brought his feet one before the other in furious repetition. Just since when could people walk on clouds?

Confusion buzzed inside his head, making him dizzy.

He called out.

"Hello?" _Echo... echo... echo..._

"Hello? Anyone there?" _Echo... echo... echo..._

No answer.

He panicked. The pile of clouds perhaps a premonition, an introduction to a nightmare. It must be. It always started out like this.

What did his teacher use to say? Silence before the storm?

Yeah. Except, he expected a violent squall, not of man against nature, but of man against man. He against himself. He against his dark self, the devil he should have sealed away two years ago with his senpai's aid.

Before he knew it, he was running. Running, just like he always did in his nightmares. Running away from the demonic displays that would soon appear to block off his escape routes.

He ran, ran, ran. The footsteps soaked up by the clouds beneath his feet gave him the impression that he had merely been running in place.

After a while, he reached to a giant gate, something he witnessed standing guard to that rich Hyoutei captain's luxurious mansion.

Beside the bronze bars, he spotted a square tile floating in the air. The square tile, an ordinary household bathroom mirror, that shouldn't have been there.

Akaya walked up to the mirror short of breath, a sequela fear and intense exercise left behind.

He saw his twin stare back in his chaotic waves of dark hair, dark brows, cautious emerald eyes, long pointed nose, grim line between his lips, long neck, broad shoulders.

See. Just an ordinary mirror. Or so he thought.

Suddenly, his image disappeared from the mirror. Then, he found himself watching a series of clips as if someone had replaced the mirror with a television.

Those weren't ordinary clips he normally sees on television, either.

They were bits and pieces of his life. Embarrassing moments that he thought he had buried under the accumulation of time and erased with selective amnesia.

He saw the players he hurt in his Devil Mode. The college letters and catalogs his parents told him to review but got shoved in the back of his closet instead. The teachers who scolded him for his continuous incomplete and missing assignments. The fights he picked with other students. The practices he skipped…

Childish behaviors. Rebellious acts. Reckless deeds. Unsuccessful attempts at preventing the future.

Akaya didn't know how long he stood there watching the images. Watching them replay over and over again.

Disgusted, he turned away, the sting of shame and guilt as painful as his former fukubuchou's slap.

He found another already there standing beside him.

"...Ya-Yanagi-senpai!" He called out in immediate recognition.

The other only watched him calmly. He found it somewhat amusing that their first reunion after the other's graduation occurred at such a place.

Though, the other's appearance only made him more anxious than amused.

"Why are you here? Why am _I_ here? Are we..." He gulped. "... _dead_?"

Yanagi shook his head. "You are currently at a critical point of your life. You are here for guidance."

Guidance? The only kind of guidance he's been receiving came from his teachers and academic advisers. They advised him on his choices of colleges. They attempted to talk him through his ambivalence. They encouraged him to take advantage of his strengths.

But what did they know about Kirihara Akaya's life beyond what's printed in paragraphs and paragraphs of black ink on white printer paper?

"But, Yanagi-senpai..."

His senpai's opened eyes stared at him, silencing his protest.

Unlike the mirror that reflected upon his past, his senpai's eyes showed him his future. The deep, dark, mysterious future with light specks glimmering within. He settled down.

"The past may seem just as scary to you as the unknown future. But you must push forward. If you do not, then what you see accumulated in the mirror next time would only break you."

"..." He listened intently. His senpai was one of the few people he allowed to lecture him.

"The meaning of its existence is not to show you your regrets to cause you to loathe yourself. We are all human; we are all going to have regrets some way or another. Rather, it is there as a reminder. The mirror is there to challenge people to work harder, to achieve their goals so they will have less regrets. So that one day, they would not be afraid to look at the mirror because their gains outweigh their losses."

They both gazed at the mirror a bit longer. A blank mirror now. As if neither of them stood in front of it, neither of them existed in this unknown dimension.

"What you need now is discipline. You need to think about what it is that you want out of your life. What is it that you wish to accomplish? No one can answer that for you. You must make the decision for yourself. And once you have made that decision, you must take responsibility for it. Do you understand?"

He nodded. Hesitantly. Slowly.

"Go then. You do not belong here."

"…You're right." He peered at the other. "But neither do you."

His senpai made no reply. He only reached out, letting his fingers poke lightly at his shoulder.

He began falling then. The clouds no longer able to support his weight.

But even as he fell, he couldn't take his eyes off of the other. His senpai. His former teammate. His friend. His mentor.

He watched until the layers and layers of clouds obscured his sight, until he could no longer see the other's figure.

Akaya landed on a soft surface. His bed.

When he opened his eyes, the flat white ceiling replaced the curves and rounds of nostalgic cream clouds.

He sat up. The book he battled against lied sprawled out, its pages opened against the floor. Rubbing the last traces of drowsiness from his eyes, he bent over to scoop the book up from the floor.

Outside his window, the moon perched behind the clouds. The golden outline of heaven's gate peeked out, serving as the reminder of his dream.

**Author's Note:**

>  _The Five People You Meet in Heaven_ is Mitch Albom's masterpiece. It's a simple but powerful book. This author's style is also quite inspiring.


End file.
